Samsung Unveils First Cat. 18 LTE Modem With 6CA Support

Samsung has just announced a brand new, ultra-fast LTE modem. The company has announced that it has developed a new LTE modem for next-gen mobile SoCs, and this modem actually supports 6CA (Carrier Aggregation), which makes Samsung the first company to release such tech. Samsung also notes that this new tech managed to achieve a maximum downlink speed of 1.2Gbps (gigabits per second), we're looking at Cat. 18 LTE here.

Now, for comparison's sake, the Exynos 8895 SoC, which is Samsung's flagship processor included in the Galaxy S8 and the Galaxy S8 Plus, comes with a Cat. 16 LTE model which can achieve 1.0Gbps downlink speed, and it has 5CA support, so it's safe to assume that this new model with 6CA support and 1.2Gbps downlink speeds will be included in Samsung's upcoming flagship Exynos chip, and that processor will fuel the Galaxy S9 next year. Samsung says that you can basically download full-length HD movies within 10 seconds thanks to this new modem, and there are all sorts of other benefits thanks to such speeds, of course. Samsung also says that by increasing the aggregation capability from the previous model's five bandwidths to six that are included in this new modem, the company managed to offer a more stable data transfers, despite the fact they're now faster than ever before.

It's worth noting that this new model also supports 4×4 MIMO (Multiple-Input, Multiple-Output) and higher-order 256 QAM (Quadrature Amplitude Modulation) scheme, plainly speaking, this is supposed to maximize the data transfer rate. Samsung's new tech also allows telecommunications companies to make full use of their resources, as this modem utilizes enhanced Licensed-Assisted Access (eLAA) that can aggregate licensed and unlicensed spectra. The company also said that this new modem will enter mass production by the end of this year, which also suggests that the Galaxy S9's Exynos SoC will ship with such technology once the company announces it next year, and that will probably happen in March or April. The Vice President of System LSI Protocol Development at Samsung Electronics also said that this new modem highlights Samsung's leading design capabilities and well-positions the company for the upcoming 5G era.